Gerry Sutcliffe: The annual school sport survey shows that, although the disparity in participation in sport between girls' schools and boys' schools is narrowing, there remains a need to reduce the gap further. Key to achieving that is to provide further sporting opportunities that respond better to girls' needs and abilities. That is why we are investing an additional £100 million to offer physical education and sport to all pupils aged 5 to 16, and three hours for those aged 16 to 19.

Gerry Sutcliffe: Increasing participation is a target across government, but what is important is that we make sure that all Government Departments can contribute. On participation, we are working very closely with the Department for Children, Schools and Families and with Department of Health to make sure that there are no gaps for people to fall through. However, the question of where the responsibility will lie depends on the outcome of the Sport England review, which we hope will take place toward the end of February. The review will doubtless make sure that we do not let girls and hard-to-target groups fall through such gaps.

Andy Burnham: My hon. Friend is on the right theme as far as I am concerned, because the issue is a passion of mine. We can look forward to significant progress in this area with the development of what we call the cultural offer, whereby we make available a much wider range of cultural and artistic opportunities to young children at school Some arts organisations, such as the Royal Opera House and others, are doing a great job in forging links with schools and making new opportunities available. I will be happy to meet my hon. Friend to see whether we can take that agenda still further forward.

Bob Spink: This motion seeks to limit debate to 10 o'clock tonight, which in view of its importance is quite improper. The whole country is interested in our constitutional relationship with the European Union. We are debating the timetable for that debate, so it is important that we do not curtail the debate in any way.
	Last night, BBC Radio 4's "Westminster Hour" at 10 pm covered the House's upcoming business, yet at no time was the EU debate mentioned. That shows, of course, the lack of publicity given by the BBC, because of its bias and probably as a result of the EU's funding of the BBC. The soft loans and other funding amounts to some €256 million over the past five years alone. That shows the importance of our having an unlimited debate in this House, so that people in this country can understand the importance of the question. I am certainly against the motion and I urge the House to vote against it so that Members can debate the matter for as long as it takes and we can get publicity and understanding in the country on its importance.

Jim Murphy: Of course I will take some more interventions, but with your agreement, Mr. Speaker, not four simultaneously. I am still only a quarter of the way through page 1 of my brief, and all that I have done is to offer the introductory quote from the Prime Minister. I have another 12 three quarter pages left. I give way to the hon. Member for North Essex (Mr. Jenkin).

Greg Hands: May I come back to the charter of fundamental rights, as it is peculiar that specific time has not be set aside to debate it. The Minister will recall that last week, I intervened on him and asked him about the fact that the previous Prime Minister had said that the charter of fundamental rights would not apply in the United Kingdom at all. However, the Minister told the European Scrutiny Committee on 2 October that the protocol
	"was a statement of how the Charter provisions will apply in the UK".
	It is absolutely fundamental to the question whether the treaty is acceptable or not that we should debate whether the charter will take effect in the United Kingdom, and whether judgments by the European Court of Justice will have an impact on UK law or not.

Jim Murphy: Without wishing to repeat what I said to my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme, there is an opportunity, both in the themed debate on the single market, and in the debate on human rights, which includes the charter, to have a detailed conversation about those matters. Again—in Glasgow, we would say for the umpteenth time—may I repeat that the UK has neither sought nor achieved an opt-out from the charter of fundamental rights, which will apply in the UK. The position is very clear indeed.

Gerald Howarth: I am extremely grateful to the Minister for his courtesy in giving way. He will be aware that the real issue of concern to the British people is the extent to which the treaty transfers further powers to the European Union. May I put it to him that, given those concerns, the Government would be well advised to accept the amendment tabled by my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition, in which he suggests that there should be specific discussion of
	"the role and legal status of the EU institutions, including legal personality."
	That goes to the heart of the case that has been made on the continent for a united states of Europe, which the Minister will accept ought to be the subject for specific debate in the House.

Simon Hughes: That is very generous of the hon. Gentleman. However, we have not yet had an opportunity to get the amendment passed. When it is available and has been passed, we can have that discussion— [Interruption.] My hon. Friend the Member for Kingston and Surbiton reminds me that the hon. Member for Glasgow, South-West has always held this position.
	The Minister, trying to rescue his friends from a difficult position, generously said that he was willing to be flexible. I think that he will certainly need to be so if he is to make progress after tonight. Whatever happens, we hold ourselves ready to have the necessary conversations among all the political parties about how we can be much more flexible than the current proposal allows.
	It is a nonsense that in respect of days 10 and 11, on which we are likely to debate the referendum proposals and remaining business, the same extension of time is not available unless other arrangements are made. We know what is coming down the track; we know what are likely to prove the most controversial areas, so we should provide for them. It is nonsense, too, to assume that Report stage will not happen because there will have been no amendments. Only six hours are programmed for Report and Third Reading. As this Bill is so important, even if there were no amendments, there should be two days for Second Reading and two days for Third Reading, so the provisions in the motion are clearly inadequate.
	In conclusion, I have reached the view that the modernising tendencies of the Government, whereby they want to do something good with procedure, have been overridden by the old tendency, described so well by my hon. Friend the Member for Twickenham (Dr. Cable) when he spoke of the Stalin in No. 10 and his authoritarian friends. That has been reflected in authoritarianism about the timetable for the Bill. We are witnessing ridiculously authoritarian control over this timetable. If this is the most important measure before us—I am not necessarily saying that it is—and if it must be debated on the Floor of the House because of its constitutional importance, it must have all the time it needs for full debate. We need to make that time; we do not sit in Parliament as long as we used to and Liberal Democrat Members are ready to make the time available. We may have different views about the merits of the Bill or the treaty, but the House will do itself a disservice if it does not provide enough time to debate the Bill properly.
	Those who want a referendum, whether it be Liberal Democrats or Conservatives in different ways, may believe that there will be an opportunity to have one later, depending on amendments and other things. However, it is very misguided indeed for the Government, who are unwilling to have any referendum, to seek to clamp down on debate of this Bill.

Patrick Cormack: I was tempted to ask the hon. Gentleman to give way. Of course there has been a steady erosion in Parliament's role—I made that point—but the current Government are the ones who brought in automatic timetabling.
	The hon. Gentleman referred to last Monday's debate and I agree that, from the point of view of oratory, it was a debate of quality, but Members' speeches were restricted to eight minutes, and I do not believe that it is consistent with the best form of Parliamentary democracy to have tight limits on speeches. It was also, in all, only a five-hour debate on issues of such importance, because there were two statements. When we debated whether we should join the Common Market, we discussed the matter for a week, day after day after day. Last week, we should at the very least have had a two-day debate—and I completely agree with the hon. Member for North Southwark and Bermondsey (Simon Hughes) that we should have two days for this Bill's Third Reading debate.
	Members are parties to an emasculation of our own powers. I do not refer to the Modernisation Committee when I am chatting with friends; to me, it is the "Emasculation Committee", because it has taken away powers from this Chamber in so many particulars. I believe that the automatic timetabling of debate is the worst thing that has happened to Parliament in the past decade.

Andrew Miller: It comes back to the point that I made about the use of timing rather than time. I do not suppose any right hon. or hon. Member, however long they have been here, has received many letters from constituents saying, "Congratulations. It was really good to see you on your feet at 3 am." Most people think that that is a daft way of conducting business, and believe that we ought to look at things slightly differently.
	My hon. Friend the Minister implied that the Government had got the allocation of time about right. I want to explore that gently with him, and I invite the House to look at the procedures adopted by other countries. Ireland is an obvious exception, because it is bound constitutionally to adopt the process. One country has already ratified the treaty—Hungary, which spent less time debating the treaty than we have spent debating procedure this evening. No hon. Member will say that the approach adopted by Hungary, with its extraordinary history, is less democratic than ours. It is different, and there are differences from which we can learn. The most significant difference is that the official Opposition—the Fidesz alliance, which is a Conservative grouping—agreed with the Government that the treaty should go through. There was no attempt by the Opposition to oppose the treaty just because they were the Opposition: they took a responsible approach as a result of negotiations that took place not in a few hours on the floor of the Hungarian Parliament but over a number of years, and began with the process that resulted in Hungary's accession to the EU—in which I played a small part.
	The process in Hungry was profoundly different from the one adopted here, and from the one adopted in Ireland. I suspect that as the rest of the countries undertake their own procedures, there will be a spectrum of approaches. However, there will not be many countries, if any, that spend more hours than us dealing with the matter in their debating chamber. There are many other types of Committee process. On reflection, when we look at this in future, perhaps we will see whether there are any lessons to be learned from the processes adopted elsewhere.

William Cash: I am sorry that the hon. Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Mrs. Dunwoody) is not here, because she got very close to putting her finger on the fundamental question—the absence in the so-called themed debates of crucial issues that need to be addressed. To my mind, the most crucial issue is the implementation of the treaty into United Kingdom law. All that those themes amount to is a collection of discussions that could have taken place in a generalised Adjournment debate of the kind that we had just before Christmas.
	We have heard my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (Mr. Clarke)—I am glad to be able to say that—and my right hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk, Coastal (Mr. Gummer), as well as the hon. Members for Crewe and Nantwich, for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Paul Farrelly), for Linlithgow and East Falkirk (Michael Connarty), and for Hemsworth (Jon Trickett). We heard my right hon. Friend the Member for Richmond, Yorks (Mr. Hague) stating brilliantly, in a nutshell, that we are not being given an opportunity to discuss these matters properly.
	We have reached a new nadir—a travesty of Parliament involving the application, in an unprecedented manner, of a new and, as I said earlier in a point of order, controversial innovation that is made that much worse by the manner in which it is being done. It is made that much worse because the new clauses are stuck at the back end of this operation and are to be dealt with on the same day, with only a moment of interruption, as the referendum clause. That means that essential questions that need to be examined will not be, such as the implications for the supremacy of Parliament and the fact that, once the treaty has gone through, based on previous examples, there would be no reversal of the acquis communautaire and no way to reverse it except through the condition set down in my new clauses about
	"notwithstanding the European Communities Act 1972".
	Similar considerations apply to the Bill of Rights, but we can deal with those problems when we get to them. I am concerned that under the Government's proposals, such matters will be dealt with at the end of our considerations without proper time for discussion, so it is more than likely that they will be pushed out by discussions on the referendum. If the supremacy of Parliament itself is to be put at that stop-end, there is very little future for this Parliament at all.
	I would like to touch on the fact that, as Ivor Jennings said with respect to the question of conventions, the basis for a convention has to be the reason for the rule. Looking at the manner in which the motion has been put forward, it is impossible to find any rational reason in the context of discussion. Discussion was the system described by Bagehot, whom I think could still be regarded as one of the greatest authorities on Parliament and the constitution, if not the greatest. He said that we have a parliamentary system that is government by parliamentary discussion, and that responsible government is decided by votes on decisions, which rest on confidence and trust. Is this government by discussion? No. Is it responsible government? No. Is there confidence and trust? No, no, no. Implementation of law is not implementation of policy. In the context of procedure, I also cite Main's "Ancient Law", where it was said that justice is to be found in the "interstices of procedure". It is not possible for us to do justice in this House under a procedure of the sort before us today.
	Setting aside the allegations of corruption that currently attract the attention of the media, what we are witnessing today is a true corruption of our democratic system—a reduction of Bagehot's description of government by discussion to a farce. Another great constitutional commentator, Sir Courtney Ilbert, stated
	"Parliament of the present day has largely reverted in substance to the...Parliaments of the first Edwards under which the King...made the laws".
	That was said in the 20th century and repeated in an important, authoritative text recently, which stated that things are the same today as they were when Sir Courtney Ilbert made his comment. The Stuarts were very little different, hence the rebellion that took place against them in the civil war, and that continued even after 1660, with the removal of James II and what led to the beginnings of our modern system of government. Those are the issues at stake.
	Anyone who thinks that analogies with the 17th century are inappropriate should remember that the powers being arrogated today by the Prime Minister and the European Union—a thoroughly undemocratic body—are in no way different from the kind of powers arrogated by the Stuarts in their own time. Indeed, the secret treaty of Dover was made in return for money that was received from the French explicitly in order to prevent Parliament from being recalled so that there would be no proper discussion. That was what it was all about.
	I believe that as a consequence of the proposals in the motion our parliamentary system is being fatally undermined. I am deeply disturbed by the way in which this motion has been put forward.
	In my judgment, the draining of the well of the clear spring water of our democracy has left at the bottom a fetid sludge that has been dominated by the direction taken by the Government and the Government Whips. The Foreign Secretary refers to our concerns as "institutional navel-gazing". I looked that phrase up— it is described as "profitless meditation". Such consideration is only profitless for those who do not see what is at stake as the Bill is rammed through by the Whips without proper discussion. Direction has been substituted for democratic parliamentary discussion. Parliament is abused and degraded by this process.
	We see the words "advice and consent" in the preamble to every Bill. As Erskine May noted,
	"freedom of speech is so necessary for the making of laws, that if it had never been expressly confirmed, it must still have been acknowledged as inseparable from Parliament, and inherent in its Constitution."
	That was the great Erskine May, and his words are as important now as they were then. To support that view, he quoted a statement by the representatives of the Commons at a conference with the Lords in December 1667:
	"No man can doubt but whatever is once enacted is lawful; but nothing can come into an Act of Parliament, but it must be first affirmed or propounded by somebody; so that if the Act can wrong nobody, no more can the first propounding. The members must be as free as the Houses: an Act of Parliament cannot disturb the state; therefore the debate it tends to cannot; for it must be propounded and debated before it can be enacted."
	The language may be somewhat arcane, but that quotation is highly relevant to our purposes today.

Mark Francois: The Chief Whip shakes his head; he should read the ruling given by Mr. Deputy Speaker in  Hansard tomorrow. The matter does not rest there. The Government's case for avoiding a referendum rests largely on providing "detailed parliamentary scrutiny" , as they put it, of the Lisbon treaty in the House, but the Minister completely failed to justify the abandonment of the referendum pledge, on which almost every Member to the House was elected.
	The marginalisation of Parliament is even more disturbing given the leak of a confidential Slovenian EU presidency strategy paper today. It sets out a raft of areas in which the detail of what the treaty will mean in practice has yet to be decided. That applies to decisions on the exact role of the new EU President and the high representative; on the powers of Eurojust and Europol; and to the exact meaning of the solidarity clause should an EU member be subject to a terrorist attack. Those are the very areas that Parliament should wish to scrutinise, yet the process in which the Government have collaborated is designed to avoid exactly that scrutiny. How can the House question the details of the role of the new EU President, if those details are still being worked out? Effectively, as the think-tank, Open Europe, has argued, we are being asked to trust the Government to sign a blank cheque. I do not think that we should sign it.
	On one level, the Government have already lost the argument about the treaty. Almost every impartial observer has concluded that in substance it is essentially the same as the EU constitution, and that it will mean a substantial increase in the EU's powers. The programme motion is an admission of the extent of the Government's defeat. It cuts time for debate on matters of genuine importance in the treaty—justice and home affairs; the EU President; the EU Foreign Minister; the EU's new legal status; changes to defence arrangements; and the profound changes to the treaties—to a minimum. Instead, it ekes out time for talk about other subjects, some of which are important in their own right but to which the treaty makes very little difference at all.
	Ministers are behaving rather like a student who, when asked a question to which he does not know the answer, gives an answer to a completely different query. That is the level to which the Government have sunk: jester politics in place of the detailed debate that they promised us all along. Our amendment to the motion would give the House the bare minimum of debate that the Bill merits. It would ensure that, as promised by the Government, there would be 20 days of debate in the Commons. Instead of the absurdity of trying to discuss the vast and far-reaching changes in justice and home affairs in one day, we would have at least two days to do so. Let us remember that the Government's position is that the establishment of a common EU asylum policy and a common EU immigration policy by treaty does not even merit a day's debate in itself, which is indefensible.
	The amendment would allow greater consideration of the major changes that the treaty will make in foreign and defence policy, including the role of the EU Foreign Minister, the diplomatic service, the loss of vetoes in foreign affairs, and the creation for the first time of a common European defence policy. Those issues surely merit more than one day's debate. The amendment would provide two days to consider the profound legal changes that the treaty effects such as the granting to the EU of its own legal personality; the abolition of the intergovernmental status of criminal justice; and the declaration on the primacy of EU law. The amendment would allow some debate on the distribution of powers between EU and member states brought about by the treaty, yet the Government, according to the motion, think that such discussion is completely unnecessary, even though the treaty, for the first time, lists the EU's areas of competence and their nature.
	The amendment would ensure, too, that the charter of fundamental rights and the British protocol pertaining to it are debated, whereas Ministers, who are already very sensitive on this issue, clearly did not want the charter even to be mentioned in the programme for debate. The amendment would allow some discussion of the treaty's effects on national Parliaments. The European Scrutiny Committee has repeatedly drawn attention to the obligations that the treaty places on the House, but Ministers seem to think that there should not be any debate about that, either.
	Our amendment rectifies a basic structural flaw in the Government's programme. One and a half hours to debate amendments is practically unworkable. It prevents detailed discussion of the treaty, and as anyone remotely familiar with European treaties knows, the details matter. In our view, 20 days is not enough to do justice to the treaty. A case could easily be made for more debate and, as confirmed by the House of Commons Library, Maastricht, by comparison, was debated for 29 days. The programme motion, however, offers less than half that time. We have sought to allow the House to vote for a programme that simply holds the Government to their original word. The amendment would not wreck the Bill; it would simply allow the House to do the job that the Government promised that it would do in the first place.
	The whole story of the treaty is shabby: it was cooked up behind closed doors; it was rammed through to avoid public debate, with almost any deal being struck to evade the people's verdict in a referendum; and it was signed in circumstances of considerable national embarrassment.
	The Government know that they are losing the argument. To take one recent example, this week's Charlemagne column in  The Economist stated:
	"The British Government is accused of breaking its word by rejecting a referendum. That too is true. Even Europhiles wince as Ministers struggle to justify their about turn."
	The Minister was certainly struggling earlier, when he did not justify the Government motion to the House. The Government's programme motion represents a further betrayal of the people and of this House as well. We should deal with the treaty with proper thoroughness in accordance with the promise that the Prime Minister made to this House and to the people who sent us here. That is what we propose to the House tonight.